Soulforged Dungeoneer

The next floor surprised me just because it was the first major variation on the five-floor cycle that I'd grown accustomed to. While yes, both the floor's trickiness and the monster difficulty increased, the floor got a lot weirder a lot faster than I was expecting, while the changes to the monsters were more or less on track.

We entered floor twelve and came out in a thin slice of the circular tower, upside down (that is to say, on the "sky" of the painted room). The slice was basically a long-ish rectangle with one curved side, and on the other end of the rectangle was an arrow on the wall pointed "up" at the "ground"--obviously to indicate another gravity swap when we got that far. Which, okay, whatever, but directly above us was a cutout in the "ground"--if we swapped gravity, most likely we'd have to walk back to this end, jump down the hole, go to the other side again, and probably switch back to get to an exit. That on its own sounded a little short for a level to me, but I guess there would be another trick, right?

Meanwhile, we had our typical monster variants, which naturally were baffling. Joining the barbarian librarians were "Avian Barbarian Comedians" -- not like harpies, these were actual birds (large and dangerous looking, of course, I guess because that's the only way to make a bird a barbarian...?) that hung out, mostly on the ceiling (which was floor to them) and just cracked dumb jokes all the time. I was immediately sure they would judge us based on whether or not we laughed, but...

"Hey," I heard a shrill bird-voice cry in the distance. "Did you hear about the crow sitting on the telephone pole? He wanted to make a law-distance caw."

...they were kind of terrible. It took me a long moment to even process that we had run into more joke enemies, even as Louise let out a squee of delight. "Why, administrator?" I mumbled to myself, but tried to continue analyzing the Floor layout even as my ears caught more of the ongoing nonsense.

"How do you get down from an elephant?" asked one bird of another, to which another indignantly squawked, "You can't get down from an elephant, they don't have any feathers!"

"Hey, lady," squawked another bird, "you've lost a lot of weight recently. What's your secret?" "Egg-sercize!"

Another, in the distance: "What do you call a parrot that flies off and never comes back?" "A polygon!"

I screwed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears, trying to focus. Some part of me wanted to listen; not because the jokes were good, but because I'd gotten used to the idea that when it came time to be sociable, I had to actually try, because it wasn't... natural. That's the thing about being an introvert; you do have to make a habit of trying, and I did... usually.

I looked around the tower again, trying to find the other new monster types, because of course there would be some, and of course there were. There were two other notable types that I spied immediately, one being another Barbarian subtype that carried a mop, were completely naked, and had just the most chiseled bronze bodies you could possibly want to not look at, at all, because they are naked, called "Olympian Barbarian Custodian". I'm not sure Louise had noticed them quite yet. I, uh, didn't point them out.

The last of the obvious enemies were wooden chairs. That's it. They were just chairs. The system called them "Barbarian Chairians." I... guess they would probably jump at you or attack you if you sat on them or something. They were just chairs scattered around the floor and the ceiling. Sometimes the Librarians or the Olympians would sit or lean on them. I think that the Olympians were deliberately trying to show off their asses, because they did a lot of leaning.

"I am starting to realize," I said out loud, hoping that Louise would hear, "that there is a running theme here. Everything is distracting."

Louise, to her credit, tore her attention away from the wise-cracking bird monsters and looked at me, frowning as she considered what I said. "Is there something actually dangerous they're distracting us from?"

Wow, uh, I wasn't expecting her to immediately jump to the main issue, admitted Merry. But yeah, I'm not seeing an immediate death threat here. Distractions, but where's the punch? Where's the ambush?

And then there was a ding from the wall behind us. A door that we hadn't noticed opened, and out stepped what was obviously a Barbarian mini-boss. He was dressed in what was rapidly becoming a trademark clashing combination of styles for this Dungeon: sandals, a men's black and white formal ensemble ripped open by his excessive muscles, with bronze armor overtop it and a strange combination of black top-hat with a laurel leaf crown. The name? "Victorian Barbarian Caesarian".

He lifted a bronze shortsword and shield and, without a moment's hesitation or any sign of compassion or concern, immediately charged me. I pushed Louise back and, after a moment's hesitation, took my pair of black Devil's swords over the Executioner. Although the larger sword had most of my enhancements on it, I was worried it would lose in a battle against a skilled opponent with a shield. Even so, my first instinct was immediately wrong: I swung with my left hand against the shield in his left, leaving my back open to his right hand. Usually, I was fast enough to get away with that kind of sloppy dueling, but...

The strike to my back fucking hurt, and mostly on instinct I threw myself away with Telekinesis, the added pain of the headache reminding me just how fucking reckless I was being challenging a new section of dungeon while not in top form. I started to pop a healing potion--but the Caesar was already moving for Louise, his face serious, his movements cold and purposeful.

I couldn't stop taking the potion, though--I mean, I could have, but the one hit had done more than a healing potion's worth of damage to me, mostly because I didn't tend to wear armor. I did, though, yank hard on my telekinesis and throw on my boots of Air Dash, both aiming to knock the fucking asshole's block off before he could do to Louise what he did to me. She would survive several attacks, as would I, but his fucking ruthless attitude put a damn chill in me in moments.

So I used my excessive mobility to spin in midair and deliver a strong forehand smash. I was... more than a little bit miffed when the miniboss reacted to me almost instantly and brought his shield up to block the strike.

I think we're supposed to run, offered Merry. I bet Stealth wouldn't work on him either. To avoid fighting him, I mean, we gotta run.

"Supposed to run my ass," I snarled, tossing away my offhand blade and swapping the Executioner back in. "I'm a goddamned solo diver and I don't run from fucking anyone."

In response, the barbarian Victorian Caesar turned, readying his sword, and as I was knocked away by our blow, he suddenly jumped at me, sword aiming at an opening I hadn't even registered--stabbing my knee, which I suppose was the closest of my vulnerable critical strike points to the guy. Predictably, when I landed on my feet, I had no strength in that leg and almost collapsed--and would have, if I wasn't a goddamned telekinetic. Even so, I used the larger Executioner as a crutch, slamming it into the ground between us to also act as a momentary shield.

Merry, I snarled at my fairy. Put me in deep and don't let me lose it no matter what.

Obligingly, Merry shifted something inside so that I could touch the deeper parts of Telekinesis. I felt... freer than I'd ever felt before. Always, to this point, I'd had to force myself into that trance, trying to dig into my memories of the dark times that had first shown me the way, and it was a mess of stress and frustration. There was still the headache coming from my wounded Dungeoneer system, but in all honesty, calling upon the power at will instead of forcing it out was a brand new sensation, leaving me in a headspace I'd never been in before.

The Caesar squinted at me, but with a shrewdness that I'm sure was supposed to come from long experience with battle charged, putting his shield-hand between him and my Executioner and angling to come in behind me.

I let go of the larger sword. It lifted as though of its own accord, and with every bit as much ruthlessness as the Barbarian before me, it ducked down in a gap around his shield, then came up and smashed his hip, immediately spinning around while staying behind him, the next strike coming down on his opposite shoulder, then another spin to smash into the opposing side of his head.

I would not have expected a miniboss to be completely done in, but there was still a moment of real fear when he took the third blow to his head and barely even flinched, simply continuing to let his sword home in on my heart. I had no problem moving faster than him, now, and backed off, but I was less able to coordinate the large sword while moving, and he took that opportunity to charge.

It was clear after another couple minutes of this that I'd end up winning the duel, but the bastard had defense like nobody's business, and after a moment, Louise gave a cry and pointed to the wall.

Another door opened, and another Caesarian stepped out. A timer I didn't notice before started counting down from three minutes.

I dematerialized both weapons and simply picked both Caesars up with the skill, holding them in midair where they could not rush towards me. I ran through in my head every attack enhancement I had, stacking them on the Executioner, and put some extra enhancements on the only armor I had--the trollhide leather I'd gotten early, too low level to be really useful here--and popped that on as well.

And then I smashed the weaker of the two Caesars as hard and fast as I could with the Executioner. It took an embarrassing number of blows to finally kill him, and my reward...

"Oh, no, Administrator." My lips curled up into a grim smile. "You made the same mistake the Beanpole did. You made a fight so tough you thought nobody would beat it, and all he drops is a corpse."

And I had a magic ability to reanimate corpses, as slaves. Still creepy, bee-tee-dubs, offered Merry in what I thought was a cheerful tone.

Still, my pride wouldn't let me take the "easy out" here. I dropped the other Caesar and caught my weapon, trying to solve the fight. He wasn't a low-level opponent by any means--I'd gained a level from killing the last one, and I hadn't been close to leveling--and that extended to his tactics as well as his obviously sky-high stats. There was no obvious tell, no weakness to his strategy or swordplay that I could discern. In fact, it was a complete surprise when out of absolutely nowhere, the Caesar dropped dead.

Of course, even that took too long, and a third Caesar was only seconds away from spawning. Since this wasn't a thing I could actually beat, we started to retreat into the level.

"That was incredible," offered Louise as we moved away. "I was starting to think even you couldn't beat them, but by the end you were doing great!"

"Thanks," I replied. "I think what killed him is the Death Aura, which I got from Devil equipment. It's only a chance-based thing, with some extra damage, but... if he's not immune, as many times as I have to hit him to kill him, I guess sometimes his number will just come up like that."

"It can just KILL you? Just like that?"

"Oh yes." I smiled. "The second time I went through the Pearland Dungeon I didn't--hang on." As much as I wanted to exposition, two Librarians, a naked Olympian Custodian, two bird Comedians, and a Chair all conspired to interrupt me. The... the chair didn't do much of it, honestly. It just sat there.

As stressed out as I was, I really was just eager to pound the ever loving crap out of them with the Executioner, so I did that. But as I hung there in midair, death raining out on the things that dared get in our way, I got a strange sense that I was missing something, something that I couldn't quite place.

Hang on, I got this, offered Merry, sounding happy for an excuse to act. Okay, uh, weird reading on the layout of the floor. The ceiling is kind of a weird illusion... I don't think it actually reverses gravity? Like, I thought it was weird in the last place but--look out!

Because of course Caesar just couldn't stay in Rome and let us alone.

In the time it took us to fight (longer than the second fight, a lot shorter than the first), Merry continued using my enhanced telekinetic sense to study the dungeon. When I finished, Merry jumped out into my vision, a sly smile on her face. You were on to something. There's a secret. We gotta go back.

I blinked, and then turned to Louise. "Merry says there's a secret to the level. Do you mind if we go back?"

Louise had mostly been standing around looking nervous, although she did occasionally throw out a protection spell or healing if I'd permitted the Caesar to get a hit in--which I did with embarrassing regularity, because I was still interested in trying to "beat" him in a straight swordfight, and I continued to discover that I pretty much couldn't.

Anyway, the look she gave me in return was clearly doubting the plan, but so far, we'd done alright except for the first few minutes. Above us, another bird pun was told. I didn't actually hear it, and I'm not actually sure that Louise did, either. She just shrugged, and said, "I'll follow you wherever you go, Jerry."

That... kind of made me feel bad, like I was putting her in a bad place, but even after thinking twice, I still wanted to go check it out, so we headed back. There was another Caesar, of course, but with a little telekinesis, we could more or less ignore him and just head up towards that gap in the "ceiling" that was supposed to be a hole in the "floor" below us, once we reversed gravity.

As soon as we got up there, we found that once we were out of view of the floor below, there was nothing there except for a little house. By "Nothing there" I mean that the aesthetics of the walls and floor and ceiling all faded out like the builder had gotten cheap and skimped on the labor as soon as they had the chance. And the house itself was... weird, in that it didn't fit the aesthetic of the rest of the floor. It was just a very well put together little red brick cottage with a little chimney and an old lady in a rocking chair out front. From what I could see, there was also a Fairy Dungeon entrance, but... I wasn't touching that.

From what I could tell, the little old lady was an NPC, not a combatant, so we approached, Louise sticking nervously by my side. "What do you think this place is?" she asked, shyly.

The old woman spoke up from her place on the stoop, proving that she was not only an NPC, but a higher quality one. Her voice was a very stereotypical white grandmother voice, warbling gently as she spoke. "This, my dear, is the library. Not a very popular place now, I suppose, what with all the newfangled, fancy communications center nonsense they have in town. Why, I remember when every town used to have a library. Back before those outsiders came and did all of their meditation nonsense."

"Yes," she said, rocking herself in her chair gently, "back then all a man needed was religion, wine, and a good book, and they could take on the world. Women too, not that a man would chase after a woman unless she could knock his block off. Like me and my ol' husband Marv. Oh... that brings back memories. Made of sterner stuff, back then, we were. Not like you children nowadays..."

I started to get the picture that she would ramble on forever if unchecked. "May I... rent a book here, ma'am?"

She suddenly turned and looked at me. "You've already read a book, dearie. Leave some for others, unless you plan on returning it. No? I didn't think so. I bet you'd have dog-eared the pages and left your damn dirty fingerprints all--"

Louise, of course, was bright enough to see where this was going, and she stepped forward. "Ma'am, I would love to buy a book from you if I could."

The little old woman suddenly tittered. "Oh... look at you! Why of course, young lady. One book apiece, that's the rule here. Come, come, have a peek..."

Suddenly I saw a shift in Louise that I assumed was her getting an interface window. I saw her eyes light up as she glanced around.

"Skillbooks," she whispered. "She gives out skillbooks!"